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Where's Mecca from orbit?

WHILE going into space can be a religious experience for some, for the devout it can pose peculiar challenges. Take Malaysia’s National Space Agency&colon; it is trying to work out how its astronauts will practise Islam in space during a future Russian space mission.

Traditionally, Muslims pray five times per day. This would be a challenge if the “day” is the 90 minutes it takes their spacecraft to orbit Earth. “Any legal scholar advising these astronauts would have to simply pick various times that would roughly correspond to their morning, noon, afternoon, sunset and night prayers,” says Alan Godlas, a …